Long Termers

A few months’ gigging, recording and everything that goes with it – welcome to Guitarist ’s longterm test report

- Dave Burrluck

Gibson can’t do anything without the whole guitar community passing comment. Near financial collapse, a raft of ill-advised models and features, new management, QC issues, pricing… on it goes. For some, Gibson-bashing is quite the pastime.

So far this year we’ve looked at seven new Les Pauls – three models from the old regime in issue 443 and four from the new current range in issue 448. After I’d caused a bit of a furor in that earlier feature by saying the guitars needed a bit of TLC (a couple of readers felt this was unacceptable on a new guitar), I didn’t touch a thing on any of the Les Pauls for our second four-guitar round-up. Without checking it even worked, I took this Les Paul Classic to a rehearsal to prove the point that you can take, in this case, a randomly picked new Gibson out on a date and play it, enjoy it. And, I enjoyed it so much I fancied doing it again.

By the time I received the guitar back, it had been playing some more by our team and needed new strings. So while I’m at it, the first thing is to give the now quite-well-played Classic a bit of a once over. I’d do the same with any guitar, new or old. If you’re employed to do a job, a gig, you need to make sure all your tools are in tip-top condition.